Ipas Nigeria

No fewer than 184 Nigeria women die daily as a result of unsafe abortion.

The leadership of IPAS who made this known at a training workshop organized for media practitioners on capacity building on Women’s Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights, said 67.000 women die annually from unsafe abortion in the country.

A non-governmental organisation, Ipas Nigeria, has said the country loses no fewer than 10, 000 women annually as a result of unsafe abortions.

The Country Director, Hauwa Shekarau, who made this disclosure on Friday at a three-day event on capacity building for media practitioners on women’s sexual reproductive health and rights in Gombe State, called for a robust advocacy to reduce unsafe abortions in the country.

World Contraception Day: Body Calls on Stakeholders to Make Access to Modern Contraception Easy

Sept 26, 2018

A body made up of journalists, the Network of Reproductive Health Journalists of Nigeria (NRHJN), a key advocacy stakeholder has called on government and other stakeholders to join hands in closing the wide gap of access to all forms of modern method of contraception.

In a press statement to mark the World Contraception Day 2018, the network said the promotion of safe, accessible modern family planning methods at this point in time in Nigeria, is therefore very crucial towards achieving the global goal of Family Planning by 2020 (FP2020) and the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Mortality: Minister urges stakeholders to reduce maternal mortality in the country

By Regina Onyegbula
30 June 2018

The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, has stressed the need for all stakeholders to continuously work towards improving women's health, saying this will reduce the high maternal mortality rate in the country.

Adewole made the call on Friday in Abuja while delivering a keynote address at the end of the project tagged: "Preventing Maternal Deaths from Unwanted Pregnancy" (PMDUP).

“I was raped in school. As a result of this, I became pregnant. I was 13 at that time. Then, I was in Junior Secondary School (JSS) two. So I did not know that I was pregnant. When my parents found out that I was pregnant, they told me to go for abortion.

“They took me to a particular nurse somewhere in Okobaba, which is close to where we live at Otumara Community at Apapa Road, Ebute Metta, in Lagos. The nurse gave me an injection in her house one Saturday morning. I don’t know what type of injection I was given, but the nurse assured us that the pregnancy would be terminated the next two days – Monday.

More women may die as Trump creates $600m gap in funding, Nigerian activists cry out

On March 17, 2018
By Josephine Agbonkhese

One year after US President Donald Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, otherwise known as the Global Gag Rule, women’s rights activists in Nigeria have decried the policy’s effect on disadvantaged women and girls in the country.

The document, which prohibits the use of US aid money for abortions, prevents NGOs from using private funds for abortion services, from referring women to groups that provide abortions, and even from offering information on services such as contraceptives, has, in effect, created a $600m funding gap on maternal health services’ delivery worldwide.

THE Network of Reproductive Health Journalists of Nigeria, NRHJN, has urged states of the Nigerian federation to pass the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act 2018 (VAPP Act 2018) into law without delay.

In a statement to mark this year’s International Women’s Day, IWD, the network observed that the VAPP Law had potential to be Nigeria’s antidote to the expanded Global Gag Rule, GGR, introduced in 2017 by US President Donald Trump.

With a restrictive abortion law in Nigeria, thousands of sexually active adolescents and married women die needlessly from unsafe abortion. Rather than provide succour, the United States (US) President, Donald Trump’s Global Gag Rule has further tightened the noose on women, especially in developing countries. APPOLONIA ADEYEMI reports

The ordinary man in the street in Nigeria may not immediately understand the consequence of the United States (US) President Donald Trump’s Global Gag Rule (GGR). It may sound like an issue concerning foreigners in faraway far east Asian countries or in off shore Archipelago communities around the Pacific Ocean, but it is now very clear that the Trump’s GGR otherwise known as the Mexico City Policy, does not mean well for women’s reproductive health and rights globally.

A little more than a year ago after the Mexico City Policy, also known as the ‘Global Gag Rule,’ (GGR) was reintroduced by President Donald Trump on his first day in office; the fear of its dreaded impact is beginning to be felt.

GGR is an executive order by the US government that blocks U.S. federal funding for non-governmental organisations that provide abortion counselling or referrals, advocate to decriminalise abortion or expand abortion services.

Women in developing countries were the first casualties as soon as President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017. With a stroke of his pen, Trump declared war on women’s health by reinstating and expanding the Mexico City Policy, an executive order also known as the Global Gag Rule (GGR).

First introduced in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, the Mexico City Policy had earlier been suspended by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in 2009.